


A Better World

by Lacinia



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:36:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacinia/pseuds/Lacinia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The spider?  She’s in her web.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Better World

**Author's Note:**

> Agent Romanov, not Barton, is assigned to watch the Tesseract.

It feels…ah! it feels like her chest is full of ice and she can't even breathe, it hurts that much. For one second, two, it burns like nothing she has ever felt, and then she stops feeling anything at all.

Natasha would like to say, later, that she resisted, that she fought so hard she left drag marks left on her psyche. Last time someone put words in her head she fought.

Natasha did not fight. Natasha did not even think to fight. Natasha did more than just follow orders: Natasha flipped loyalties like flipping a coin. Suddenly, all she wanted was to help Loki out. She knew she'd been turned and she didn't even care, because her heart was so quiet, for once. She was so sure.

 

………………….

 

 

Before she leaves, Natasha shoots Fury in the head. Clint is a strongly loyal man; Clint has an instinct towards mercy. To Natasha, Fury is just another man intent on using her: that his aims were better than the men before him means little. Natasha's instinct is towards murder: mercy is something that she has only recently learned.

 

…………………..

 

Agent Maria Hill inherits the reins of SHIELD the way she always thought she would: suddenly, without warning, because someone finally managed to kill her boss. She doesn't let the commotion involved in a change in leadership disrupt the operation of the organization, not now, when it most matters.

"You want to fire me?” she demands of the screens. The death of the director led to an immediate meeting of the World Security Council, and they don’t believe she can do this job. “Fine, but do it later. Right now I am the best person situated to take command of SHIELD," she tells them. She’s been preparing for this for years. “We are in the middle of an emergency, and now is not the time for politics,” she argues, and miracle upon miracle, they listen. With just one dissenting vote, the Council decides to give her a week. She plans to make the best of it: she calls in all SHIELD’s errant assets immediately.

Maria does not have Fury's hidden streak of sentimentality, so she doesn’t treat Rogers with any kindness. "Enough moping around," she tells Rogers. She tosses him the complete file on the Tesseract, as well as the preliminary report from Loki’s attack. "An alien just killed Fury and took the Tesseract," she says, and walks away, not waiting for his reaction. “Be ready at 0800, we’ve got work to do,” she says as she leaves.

She sends Agent Carr to pick up Bruce Banner. Coulson gets Tony Stark. Maria dwells on the unreliability of these allies and tells Barton to stop looking for Romanov, she wants him watching them.

"With all due respect, ma'am, you need me to find Romanov. No one knows her like I do. With her intel and skills she could bring this agency to its knees. Let Hendricks babysit the geniuses."

"Objection noted, Barton, but my order stands."

Barton looks like he wants to protest, looks like he'd be willing to throw away his whole SHIELD career to go after Romanov, but no one knows like he does how much he needs to stay onboard if he's going to save her.

Maria has already given the kill order.

 

………………….

 

Behind Romanov, Barton is SHIELD’s second-most successful field agent, but he doesn’t go to Calcutta because his bearing is too much that of a soldier. Maria needed someone who won’t remind Banner of the reason he went on the run.

Agent Carr was the perfect choice: her genuine smile disguises very well that she’s just as used to a gun in her hand as Romanov is. Her long, dark hair reminds Banner of Betty Ross. Her wry, easy humor meshes well with Banner’s own. In the short amount of time they spend together, they almost become friends—but both of them are too smart to forget how very dangerous they are to each other.

 

………………….

 

“And we are just supposed to believe that the great Black Widow, that consummate liar, is not leading us into a trap?”

Natasha wants to roll her eyes. This is tedious. “Fine,” she says. “You want to know that I switched sides? How’s this. Agent Barton has a brother, goes by Barney. They’re estranged, but if you lean on him, Barton will cave.” She leans in. “That the kind of thing you were looking for?”

The Ten Rings rep gives Natasha a long look, and a slow smile. "So the Black Widow is back. The Red Room will be pleased."

"Do we have a deal or not?" she asks. She can and will take her business elsewhere.

"Yes," he says. "They'll be here in three hours."

"Twenty minutes," Natasha says. "Do I look like I'm fucking around?" she asks evenly. If they need to be impressed with the seriousness of the situation, well, she’s Natasha Romanov. She’ll convince them.

The mercenaries are there in fifteen minutes.

"What is the Red Room?" Loki asks her, once they’re back at base.

"The people who made me," she says. "I escaped five years ago."

"And what did you do then?" he asks, smiling like he knows the answer.

"I tried to burn them to the ground. I got close, too."

"Let's talk to them next," he says, and she makes contact.

They try to kill her first, certain it's a setup. She kills three of their agents before Loki says "enough" and everyone else goes still, wrapped up in a magic that chokes them and makes them ache down to their bones. Natasha is unaffected, but stops nonetheless.

Once the Red Room sees that they're serious, that Natasha really isn't here to fight them, they send in an actual negotiator.

"What do you want?" she asks, once she's told him what she's looking for.

The negotiator looks away from her towards Loki, off to the side, not really concerned. Trivialities like money and guns and soldiers and how she is possibly going to bring the Helicarrier down bore him. Loki only cares that it gets done. "You own the mind of our most rebellious, most favored daughter. We would have her back," the negotiator says.

"A high price," Loki says. "There is no one quite like her, is there?"

"Our best daughter," the negotiator repeats. "We are very proud."

"I need her," Loki says, and Natasha does not feel glad or relieved or anything at all. She feels, as she has felt since the spear sank into her heart, serene. Untroubled by the past or whatever the future may bring.

"Three days," Loki says finally. "In three days I will be done with her, and she will be yours, body and soul."

The negotiator smiles. "It is good doing business with you."

 

………………….

 

 

Clint is a good liar, because Natasha doesn't tolerate mediocrity of any stripe, but he is not the Black Widow. On his very best day he could not hope to deceive the God of Lies, so he doesn’t even try. He just asks directly.

"What did you do with Agent Romanov?"

"Who?" Loki asks, all false innocence.

"Natasha Romanov," Clint says, in a tight voice. "You took her when you stole the Tesseract."

"Your spider," Loki says. "Yes, I know who she is. I just wanted to hear you say her name."

"What did you do to her?" Clint asks again, with even less patience. He thinks about lining the plexiglass walls with plastique. He’d have to clear the surrounding decks first, but, oh, what an explosion that would be. Even Loki couldn’t survive that, he's sure.

"She told me all about you, you know."

"So what?" Clint says. "I don't have any secrets."

"Oh, I think you have one secret," Loki says, and Clint steadfastly does not react. "How would you feel to know that your Natasha knows how you feel, has always known how you felt? And what she felt for you was nothing but disgust and pity?"

Clint gazes at him levelly. "So she's alive, then?" he says, and walks away with a grim smile on his face. Brainwashed he can work with. Dead would be another story.

 

………………….

 

When Banner, Rogers, and Stark’s argument starts to glimmer with the threat of violence, Barton walks into the room and says, “Everyone calm down and get back to work or I will tranq you all and find the goddamn Tesseract myself.”

“Who are you?” the Captain asks him. Thor says much the same, but with a little more eloquence. Banner is quiet, rather having expected that they were being watched.

Stark peers at him. “Do you know a guy named Coulson?” he asks. “Or are these kind of threats standard issue with you SHIELD types?”

“Clint…” Carr warns.

“They’re fucking around when they should be working to find Natasha,” Clint says, and he realizes he’s misspoken. What’s wrong with his head?

“Who’s Natasha?” Banner asks, and Clint glares at him. He’s got a tranq gun with ammo specially made for him, and his eyes pick out all the good veins to hit.

“Agent Romanov,” Carr answers when it becomes clear Clint won’t. “Loki took her when he took the Tesseract.”

“He has hostages?” Rogers asks, concern in his voice.

“Not exactly,” Clint says.

“She flipped, right? That’s what you’re saying. Your girlfriend decided she’d rather be on the winning side, and—”

This is about the time Clint puts a gun to Stark’s forehead.

“Clint!” Carr snaps.

“You put a gun to my head you better be prepared to pull the trigger,” Stark says. “Because that’s the kind of thing I don’t forget.”

“His fucking brother did something to her and she turned her back on everything and everyone she believes in. And you better hope we find her, because she is the best agent this organization has and—”

“Barton, stand down,” Coulson says, coolly, and Clint holsters his gun automatically. A couple of decades of loyalty will do that to you. “Agent Romanov was Agent Barton’s partner,” Coulson explains, and Clint hates the past tense. “He may be emotionally invested. Barton, do you need to be relieved from duty?”

“No, sir,” Clint says, but Carr looks like she wants to drag him to the brig, or possibly the shrink.

“My brother has many tricks,” Thor says. “But he should not be able to take away a woman’s will. Not even a woman of Midgard.”

Clint and Coulson trade looks. They both know that Natasha is vulnerable to certain types of mental manipulation.

“Well, I’ve got evidence to the contrary,” Clint says, and it looks like the argument is going to simmer down, forgotten for the moment, when two of the engines goes out. The floor collapses and Carr and Banner disappear.

“Get to the engines!” Coulson yells over all the havoc, and Clint runs, because he can tell it’s sabotage just from the way the Helicarrier starts tipping. When he’s halfway to the first engine a dark-haired tech runs by in the opposite direction, and Clint spins, bites his tongue on the word “Nat!,” and only just pivots out of the way of the three bullets she tries to send into his chest.

He tries his hardest to get her back. She tries her hardest to kill him. They both fail.

He goes to Manhattan hoping there’s still time to save her.

 

………………….

 

“I figured you’d be here,” he calls out. “You never could resist watching from the center of the action, could you?”

She steps out from behind the machine. “Clint,” she says. “I figured you’d be on a roof, trying to stop a flood.”

“More important things,” he says, and very slowly shifts his weight.

“Get out of here,” she tells Erik Selvig. “Things are about to get messy.”

 

………………….

 

The fight ends with Natasha dropping Clint from the roof onto Stark’s private balcony. Surprised, and already wounded, he falls in a graceless heap. The shock and injury of a thirty-foot fall leaves him unable to defend himself when Natasha leaps down after him. She pulls a tranquilizer dart from her belt and tags him and he’s out, easy as breathing.

Above her the portal closes with a snap.

Natasha was trained in the arts of war; she knows a changing tide when she sees one. She walks inside the ruins of Stark’s home and crouches down beside Loki. “This battle is lost,” she says. “We need to move if you want to win the war.”

 

………………….

 

Clint chases her, which everyone could have told him was a terrible idea. If Coulson were alive, he would have stopped him.

Everyone could have predicted it would end exactly the way it did.

“Before you die,” Loki says, “I want you to know a truth. Natalya?”

“If you ever had the courage to ask,” she says, not lowering the gun pointed at his chest, “I would have said yes.”

They watch Clint swallow that. He’s beaten bloody, but still conscious. “You should take him,” she tells Loki. “There is no one on Earth who can do the things he can.” It is a waste, to murder a man this valuable.

“Your Earth is provincial,” he answers her. “The best among you is nothing to me. Finish this.”

Here is what Natasha remembers: the thousand hours they spent together on the range. The bow whose string she sliced is named Melissa, and it’s not even his favorite. Clint told her he wouldn’t ever die: he was too stubborn for that.

Natasha has been shooting since before Clint was born, so if she doesn’t have his perfection her aim is good enough. Her bullet takes him in the chest, and the men holding him still let him drop. His breath comes wet. Slows down. Stops. Natasha watches, face still, her heart a cool, empty sky.

 

………………….

 

“Ambitious,” the Red Room representative says. “But your plan has failed, and we yet live. Do you intend to honor our arrangement?”

Loki lazily waves a hand, and Natasha steps forward. She sits down in a steel chair bolted to the concrete floor, and chains crystallize out of nothingness to curl around her. “I return your daughter to you,” Loki says, and Natasha coughs, spitting out a bloody shard of glass. “As I found her,” he finishes, and Natasha screams at him, rage and grief and wholly different from the frozen stillness that was her soul under his rule.

“I will kill you,” she promises, and Loki smiles down at her. “I doubt that very much,” he says, as technicians push needles into her veins and attach electrodes to her scalp.

 _Kill Loki_ , she thinks. _Kill Loki, kill him, kill him, kill him_. She holds onto that thought like a life preserver, grabs it like she does nothing else. She puts that thought in a dead man’s hold, only liable to break if they wipe away every memory she has, every single piece of her self. Before she gives up her only chance for vengeance she will forget her loyalty to SHIELD, forget all the goodness she has learned, forget even the man she has loved like no other.

She holds onto it with everything she has, but they wash it away as cleanly as if it had never been there at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, sorry about the title being a complete lie.


End file.
